Familiarizing With Various WordPress Variants

If you are associated with WordPress sites in any way you will have to be aware of a vital detail about these sites. As a result of inattention towards these sites they often get hacked. But in the long run if you pay proper attention to your WordPress sites you will realize that you can turn them into much more solid and secure sites. WordPress offers a vast number of variations for its bloggers to use. While this is a useful feature and adds uniqueness to each individual site, it also causes some major problems and confusion to the site developers. In order to clear all your confusions about the ins and outs of WordPress and its mechanisms you first need to be aware of all the basic functionalities of WordPress.

Both small and large business and other types of companies and institutions use WordPress as a site that is a portal used as the blogging engine. Many business institutions also use WordPress as a Content Management System. Surveys have established that WordPress is undoubtedly the best portal for blogging which is not only popular for being the largest but also for being a site that is self-hosted. It has also made its place among the 30 most popular sites used for blog hosting.

1.WordPress vs. WordPress vs. WordPress (and later, vs. WordPress)

Our basic common knowledge about WordPress is that it is a large cluster of code which we can easily use on any server. It is also downloadable and open source. The site WordPress itself is an independent site that can manage the bunch of code. Other than all this, the basic and the most important advantage of WordPress is that it allows free blogging.

First of all, to clear our confusion we need to know just how WordPress functions and what sort of an application it is. Basically it is a site that enables fast and smooth content management. It is an application that is based on PHP and MySQL. Though it is basically thought to be a software, WordPress is self-hosted and just like WordPress there are many other such companies that have software that are self-hosted. As far as WordPress is concerned, the software here is developed and distributed by WordPress Foundation itself, which again operates at WordPress.org. Like lots of other projects that are open source WordPress is also an open source project. A specific corporate backer named Automattic is the company that runs this site, and other than this we should know that WordPress in itself is an operation that does not incur any kind of profit and is legally licensed by GNU.

Moreover, the other important thing that we need to know is that Automatic has an essential WordPress service and it has been named WordPress.com. On here, we can easily set our own WordPress web sites. Its corporate backer, Automatic handles all the important financial duties by making important premium upgrades that are also money selling. It also does all the VIP hosting in order to host WordPress to important websites and other larger organizations.

2.What is WordPress.com? (Benefits and drawbacks)

In order to understand just what service we are availing by using WordPress, we also need to be clear about the various features of WordPress.com. Automatic is the company that has developed WordPress and WordPress.com is the blogging platform that Automatic offers to all its users. WordPress.com has its own set of advantages and limitations. While you might feel that you are actually logging right into the actual WordPress site, in reality you are allowed limited control over the functions and working on the site. As a result of Automattic's full control over the ins and outs of WordPress, you don't have to worry about the technicality of WordPress. The basic networking structure of WordPress is controlled by Automattic and it hardly leaves you anything to worry about as far as installing, upgrading or making modifications to your WordPress site is concerned. However, this certain feature also comes with some certain limitations. For starters the choice of themes that you can use for your WordPress site becomes limited. You have to choose from a limited range of themes that Automattic offers, and though this range of themes increases a little bit when you have paid a certain amount of premium fee, the choices are still very little. When we speak of theme, we are referring to a particular template that you can choose to alter the overall look of your WordPress site.

Another thing that you must keep in mind is that there are quite a few features of WordPress that you will be denied if you have not paid the necessary amount of premium fee. One of the biggest disadvantage of using your WordPress site without paying the necessary premium fee is that in such a case you are not allowed to use your domain name. Though, fortunately, the price that you have to pay in order to get the premium upgrade is not too much and if you want the added benefits then you should get that upgrade by spending a small amount of money.

Another disadvantage of WordPress.com is that this site does not allow you to add the plug ins of your own choice. Plug ins are the most effective feature of WordPress because they can entirely change the functions, working process and look of your WordPress site. This minute factor can change the whole style of your site and thus it is indeed unfortunate that you do not have much control over this feature of WordPress. As a result of this drawback it often so happens that people can use this plug in feature for the software of WordPress, but when it comes to their own personal site in WordPress this plug in feature cannot be used.

3. WordPress Software

Plug ins and themes are easy to use, and if your motive is to get into the power of these plug ins or the themes of WordPress then the first option is to run the WordPress software that is self-hosted and is based on PHP or based on MySQL. This can be done in any way.

One option is to first get the Linux server for yourself and then manually install whatever is needed by yourself. On the other hand the other option is to sign up into the various services that host such WordPress sites. These sites will also allow you to add personalized themes and the plugins of your choice. There are numerous hosting providers that use many easy and less complicated install applications or even CPanel. In this case even when you are making use of your personally hosted WordPress site, you can simply install a new instance. This can be done by you by simply making the correct choice of clicking on the correct option which will allow you to set up the hosting service of your own personal choice. Among all the other options this is supposed to be the best one. The cost for doing this will definitely vary a lot depending on where on earth you are. The cost can either be free or even a large amount of thousands or more dollars that you will have to pay each month. If you are using a site that uses many expensive and commercial plugins then in order to do the necessary updates you might have to spend almost a grand. This is only if the site in which the plugins are used are big and loaded.

You may have to pay separately for the various features of WordPress, for example in order to just host your site you will have to make a payment of 40 $ a month and besides that for the purpose of monitoring and automated management you will have to make a payment of 33 dollars in a month.

But there are also other ways of hosting your WordPress sites by spending lesser than that much. There are certain legacy sites that have provided living to any company of small size. On these sites there are almost 70000 articles and near about forty bucks needs to be paid each month for the sake of making sure that these articles are available online. It is indeed a small price that you need to pay when you see the result which is so satisfactory.

If you are planning to install WordPress by using Linux and its complex command line, then you should know how exactly this process works. The whole chain of activities that is involved in installing WordPress in Linux is actually easy. WordPress installer in linux is self-sufficient. It does most of the work all by itself, and the process involved is automatic and fast. You don't have to worry about performing any of the functions to install WordPress. By installing WordPress you can easily have an interface with a web screen on your computer in a very short time.

4. WordPress vs WordPress multi-site

There is a part of WordPress which is self-hosted and is referred to as WordPress.org. This software is called so because it is from here that you get to download and make your own site, hence this is the root of all the activities of WordPress. The software of WordPress.org actually works in two very different modes. To have a clear idea about the various functionalities of WordPress you must know about the two modes based on which WordPress works.

To begin with there is a single site and there is a multi-site or a network version of WordPress. In the olden days of WordPress when the 3.0 version of WordPress hadn't yet been released, WordPress was actually distributed in two specific and absolutely separate modes of downloads. The basic WordPress was one of the two, and the other one was WordPress with multi-site feature.

With the help of WordPress version that supported the multi-site feature you could easily install one single WordPress and under it you could easily run and work on a lot of other sites. For instance you can say that you could simply distribute a fixed set of plugins and other themes to a classroom full of students. However you can give them all a separate site. Based on these each student would build his or her own site. The multi-site platform of WordPress is made for just such reasons and works.

The modern version of WordPress has similar and only slightly different features. You can use the present version as a single site or a multi-site based on your requirement and you do not have to make different installations for this purpose. These sites that perform dual functions are called a network which means that they refer to a single network of various sites that you get just through one installation.

But you should remember the various benefits and drawbacks that this innovation has. This is the best option for users of similar needs and ideal if you want to spin off a bunch of related sites.

Alternatively there are some existing themes and many plugins that are not at all compatible with the multi-site version of WordPress. The plugins that are used for the purpose of backup or in order to perform proper site management do not work on multi-site WordPress at all. Other than all this it will be difficult for you if you are planning to switch between either multi-site or single site and it is advisable that you stick to just one of the two.

Zainab is a telecommunication engineer from Islamabad, Pakistan having a flair for writing. She loves to read and write on technology and is blogging for years. Among her other favorite past times are photography, crafting, and reading.